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Authors you own the most books by?

More than three books?
Habits formed in adolescence: Dickens, Graham Greene, EM Forster, Evelyn Waugh :oops:
I'm very bad at chucking things out, which is just as well as the local book club I was strong-armed into had Brideshead Revisited last time. That must have saved me all of 50p.

Latterly I seem to have amassed Heaney, Longley, Barnes, Mantel, Adam Phillips, Richard Mabey, and Nigel Slater.

But I don't think this reflects the sort of reading I do, more a reflection of how prolific these writers are/were.
And my inability to chuck books out.

ETA: Oh, and Orwell. And Helen Ivory, Joanne Limburg, Sinead Morrissey...

Probably a lot more triples if I look properly.
(Why am I even on this thread?)
 
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From a quick tot-up of my bookshelves, I'm somewhat-but-not-really embarrassed to discover that the highest concentration belongs to a (I think) largely unknown author called Graham Oakley, author of the Church Mice kiddies picturebooks that I and my family utterly devoured when I was a kid thanks to the library. I spent a fair sum some years back to buy a complete set of the original hardbacks and thus I can count fourteen Graham Oakley's amongst my collection (with PKD coming in second at eleven). For those who don't know them, the exquisitely illustrated books were about the tribulations of a tribe of mice who lived in a typical english church and were looked after by the church cat Sampson, who had made a vow of peace not to harm any of them.

My sister even made me a diorama of one of my favourite scenes as a present, where Sampson, searching for a way to rescue two of the church mice being launched to the moon as part of Wortlethorpe's space programme and needing a warm place to sleep, accidentally destroys the control system for the the rocket. I can't find a pic of the scene in question so here's one of the diorama:
church_mice_and_the_moon_diorama.jpg
Edit: felt the above needed a picture of the book for comparison so here's a quick crappy one I took of it:
church_mice_and_the_moon_book.jpg
 
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I had the great cull from 7000 to 3500, about half of the survivors are still in plastic boxes. Most of what went were cheap SF paperbacks.

I read more literary fiction now, but that’s on kindle… As is most of the SF I’ve read over the last five years. So all my Scalzi and Novak for example are e books. Likewise all my Le Carre’s are electronic.

Guessing for this post: Full works of the following authors in a mix of hardback ( newer) and mass market paperbacks (older) as I got richer with age

Terry Pratchett
Patrick O’Brian ( including the other ones)
Heinlein
Arthur C Clarke
Kipling
CS Forester ( including the other ones)
Bernard Cornwell ( yes, including the thrillers)
Jane Austin
Hillary Mantel
Ian (M) Banks
Robert Harris
Julian Rathbone (including the detective ones)
(Original) Asterix
Spider Robinson
Douglas Adams


Then those authors where I have lots of their books, but not complete works.

Harry Harrison
Asimov
Gaiman ( novels and graphic novels, I think I have his complete works of the former but some are ebooks
Spike Milligan
Phillip Pullman
Roald Dahl ( if it was just his adult books he would be in the first list, but my mum got rid of many of my kids’ ones…)
John Wyndham
Thomas Hardy- fuck knows why, I don’t like his books that much
Gerald Seymour
Tolkien - See Hardy
James White
Allen Steele
Alan Mallinson
Garth Ennis - hard to pin down the proportion of his work I have
Alain de Botton
George McDonald Fraser
Arthur Conan Doyle
James Herbert

(Ben Arronovich: My move to e-books straddled the rivers of London series so I have half the novels in hardback and half on kindle plus all the graphic novels both as comics and then again as books..)


I’ve also got about six or seven different editions of both of the Alice books. And all the Viz books - not just the annuals.

I’ve got hard copies of my four published books, but three of them are kind of vanity editions as they were only formally issued electronically (and don’t have my name on them, boo)

I’m not particularly proud of most of these and should probably address the boxes in the garage and container…

I’ll come back to this list…
 
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Trying to downsize my library. Rev Audrey, Herge, Ransome, are all staying. Fiction seems easy to acquire but less essential to keep than reference.

Having stayed at a minimalists house has shown me a less cluttered way may have benefits. That and dealing with all my parents crap
 
Surprised at the prevalence of Thomas The Tank Engine - wasn't a part of my childhood, and even if it was, they would have been long disposed of
 
I have the classic Moomin books. A full set of Winnie the Pooh for when doing calls with China. Everything Hugh Cook wrote except the autobiography. Most of Deighton and quite a lot of le Carre.
There are Michael Moorcock books I don't own but mostly that's oversight. Sojan the Swordsman? Likewise Robert E Howard (Krull and worse...) and most all of Sprague de Camp and Carter.

I think I've got everything Charlie Stross has written - some in ebook, I admit - and at some point I did Stephen Erikson of course. And Jim Butcher - both his big series.

The Robin Hobb collection was complete at one point but has suffered wastage.

Quite a lot of Alan Moore and Bill Drummond and a vast amount of RAW and Crowley - both of them, John and Aleister. Of the two, I'd always recommend John as a far, far better writer about the occult, but Aleister is better about New England academics having affairs.

I tend to completism.

I have all of Dave Sim's Cerebus - most of it in the phone books - and have no idea whether I'll read them again - as with Neil Gaiman's good comic (two sets, for reasons), all the Alan Moore Swamp Thing, and a scary amount of Batman. But yeah.

Abercrombie, Hurley, McGuire, Brennan, Wolfe, Vance. Again, almost all of those that could be found at one time or another. Vance and Wolfe almost all physical; the others often ebooks. When I found out about the Vance Integral Edition and realised I'd missed it, I was sad, but these days on reading them they suffer from a certain taint of their time about matters best left to those days.

Annoyingly, I'd started using "Handy Library" to scan the lot so I had it all in one place, then my phone died and the backup was from long enough ago that it barely scratches. Once I get it back up I'll see if I can do hard numbers, see how that matches my recollections...
 
I am not sure. I know that I have a number of books by Chomsky, but I have not counted them.
 
rich! said:
A chomsky book.
A chomsky book and a chomsky book.
A chomsky book and a chomsky book and a chomsky book.

[A chomsky book and a]* chomsky book.

All the chomsky books.
Click to expand...
My Chomsky books are not in one place, and all my books are readily accesible. There is one buried on one pile somewhere, and another buried somewhere else. I don't want to root through different piles to count them.
 
PTK said:
I am not sure. I know that I have a number of books by Chomsky, but I have not counted them.
Click to expand...
I forgot about Chomsky. I have about a dozen books, I would guess.

Unrelated - What muddies the water are all my e-books. I have thousands of e-books but I'm only counting physical books for this - or e-books i paid full price for.
 
Irvine Welsh
Jack London
Haira Murakami
George Orwell
Gunter Grass
Antony Beevor

I'd have to check this when I got home bit this will be close.

If you've not read it, The Star Rover by Jack London is a work of art imo.
 
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Jennaonthebeach said:
I forgot about Chomsky. I have about a dozen books, I would guess.

Unrelated - What muddies the water are all my e-books. I have thousands of e-books but I'm only counting physical books for this - or e-books i paid full price for.
Click to expand...
E books do not count, in my opinion.
 
mod said:
Irvine Welsh
Jack London
Haira Murakami
George Orwell
Gunter Grass
Click to expand...
I forgot that I have some books by George Orwell. I just counted, and am surprised that I have six. (Not seven, as I mistakenly typed to being with).
 
PTK said:
E books do not count, in my opinion.
Click to expand...
i count any e-books i bought after 2020 which is when i stopped buying physical books and started only buying e-books.

(small house and i lost most of my physical books when i moved here - don't want that to happen again).
 
stdP said:
From a quick tot-up of my bookshelves, I'm somewhat-but-not-really embarrassed to discover that the highest concentration belongs to a (I think) largely unknown author called Graham Oakley, author of the Church Mice kiddies picturebooks that I and my family utterly devoured when I was a kid thanks to the library. I spent a fair sum some years back to buy a complete set of the original hardbacks and thus I can count fourteen Graham Oakley's amongst my collection (with PKD coming in second at eleven). For those who don't know them, the exquisitely illustrated books were about the tribulations of a tribe of mice who lived in a typical english church and were looked after by the church cat Sampson, who had made a vow of peace not to harm any of them.

My sister even made me a diorama of one of my favourite scenes as a present, where Sampson, searching for a way to rescue two of the church mice being launched to the moon as part of Wortlethorpe's space programme and needing a warm place to sleep, accidentally destroys the control system for the the rocket. I can't find a pic of the scene in question so here's one of the diorama:
View attachment 408191
Edit: felt the above needed a picture of the book for comparison so here's a quick crappy one I took of it:
View attachment 408197
Click to expand...

I loved those as a child! Vividly remember the trendy vicar.
 
PTK said:
E books do not count, in my opinion.
Click to expand...
Why? Is the question about who you’ve read more, or whose books you’ve got more of on your shelf?

Anyway, physical copies it would probably be Terry Pratchett (there are a lot of Discworld books :oops: ) with Margaret Atwood a very close second. But I mainly switched to e-books a few years ago and at some point read Octavia Butler’s whole catalogue, which must be in the same ball park numbers wise.
 
Agent Sparrow said:
Why? Is the question about who you’ve read more, or whose books you’ve got more of on your shelf?

Anyway, physical copies it would probably be Terry Pratchett (there are a lot of Discworld books :oops: ) with Margaret Atwood a very close second. But I mainly switched to e-books a few years ago and at some point read Octavia Butler’s whole catalogue, which must be in the same ball park numbers wise.
Click to expand...
I tried Terry Pratchett's Discworld series some years ago, when a book group of which I was a member was reading it. I could not finish it. I could understand why people liked the books, and I am sure that I would probably have got into them in my teens, beginning a life-long affection, but not now. I am interested to know at what age the lovers of the Discworld series first began reading them. I think that our affection for books is in part dependent on what we have read before, and what mood we are in when we read them. There is such a thing as a good book at the wrong time, I think.

I was thinking that e books did not count, because with them physical space is not a factor, but the thread does not specify the type of book, so I now think that e books do count. I don't know much about e books. Is it true that the company can delete them from a kindle even if you have bought them?
 
PTK said:
I tried Terry Pratchett's Discworld series some years ago, when a book group of which I was a member was reading it. I could not finish it. I could understand why people liked the books, and I am sure that I would probably have got into them in my teens, beginning a life-long affection, but not now. I am interested to know at what age the lovers of the Discworld series first began reading them. I think that our affection for books is in part dependent on what we have read before, and what mood we are in when we read them. There is such a thing as a good book at the wrong time, I think.
Click to expand...
You might be right. I remember I was 16 when I read my first one; I remember because I had a GCSE the next day and I stayed up reading till about 3am :oops:
PTK said:
I was thinking that e books did not count, because with them physical space is not a factor, but the thread does not specify the type of book, so I now think that e books do count. I don't know much about e books. Is it true that the company can delete them from a kindle even if you have bought them?
Click to expand...
I think the thread did specify physical books! I’m just not sure why the distinction was made in the first place.
 
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